Mass Effect - Fan Art

Sebviz

NEWEST UPDATE:

I’m finally done with my Mass Effect-project! I’ve learned sooo much from it! This image is done using Marmoset Toolbag 2. For some reason, it is incredibly slow to work with in Marmoset (UE4 can handle it just fine), so I’ve made some extra images with Vray :-)

This is straight out of Marmoset with minor color corrections and a little glow :-)





Texture-breakdown of the body/face:




Texture-breakdown of the armor:




Here’s a couple of Vray-renderings:





Lately I’ve been feeling an itch to do something related to the Mass Effect series. Something that would integrate into the universe but still be my own take on it. I think the itch rose from seeing the new cinematic trailers for the upcoming Master Chief Collection which made me think of the Playstation equivalent: Mass Effect. I’ve always been a huge fan of Mass Effect and Bioware, and with Mass Effect 4 in the making and possibly a remake of the first 3 titles, it just seemed like the right time to make something myself.

I’ve chosen to do a full character, mainly because I thought that would be the most rewarding and fun thing to do.

I think I’m done with designing the character and I made some color changes in the process. When I combined the head with the armor it all just blended together, so I decided to change his tribal markings to a bright yellow which compliment the blue armor great ( I think).



Next up is – well I’m not exactly sure yet. I’m not sure whether to just use the rough sculpt in ZBrush to bake from or retopologize in 3ds max first (high poly retopologize)?

J Cook

Cool stuff! Hope to see more

Sebviz

J Cook, Thanks!

I've begun on my retopologized mesh.

urgaffel

This looks really promising, will be fun to see it develop!

Port-Seven

Huge fan of Mass Effect, too. The head concept is awesome but when I see the full body the character looks to me more like a human with a mask on, because of the hands I think. Perhaps they could be more unique to the species (turian, krogan, salarian, etc. all have varying hand shapes). The armor is really great also.

jeremiah_bigley

Very strong start! I agree with the hand comment though. Feels out of place comparing them to the head.

Sub'd*

jhoythottle

Solid concept. I like your style.

Sebviz

Thanks guys! I agree with you regarding the hand, I will see what I can do with it. If you have any reference on "funny" hands, please post :-)

I've done a quick drawing my self, I'm not that good with hand-drawing, so bear with me :-D

Sebviz

Done with the head/body. Except the hands :-)

ae.

this is awesome! really like the characters look, seems that he would fit really well in the mass effect universe.

Sebviz

Thanks ae!

Here is my second attempt on making something different with the hands. I've tried to make it as humanoid as possible because I thought giving him claws or something animal-like, would take away from his intellect and make him less likable.

Sebviz

I've been busy cleaning up my rough sculpt :-)

Sebviz

update:

lotet

Pretty cool! great hard surface modeling. Is it all box moddeling or is that Z-remeshed?
also I love your 2D sketches.

ae.

you mind showing some wires on that body armor?

Sebviz

Thanks lotet!

Yeah its all box modeling but i use Turbosmooth Pro with edge crease instead of control edges. That way I can use the same model for both high poly and low poly with minimum tweaking. Also it makes it a lot easier to modify the mesh :-)

Sebviz

ae, here are some wires :-)

ae.

really great work! thanks for sharing

Sebviz

Thanks ae!

I've was told that my face-mesh was not very animation friendly, so I've updated it. It didn't do anything good regarding the polycount, but I want it to be animation-ready, if I want to try doing animations later on. I've also updated the armor and the hands :-)

Sebviz

Here is a small update, I haven't had much time to do much on him since last update because of the christmas-hassle :ugh:

http://youtu.be/x3ZVPxLw2P0

Grubber

It is very cool! Can't wait for more!

Sebviz

I finally got around to finish the high poly version of my character . It involved a lot of box-modeling and patience! I’ve made the model so I can easily turn it into a low poly (game-ready) version by not working with control-edges but “crease values” using the Turbosmooth Pro plugin. I don’t know when I’ll have the next update ready, since I’m in the process of moving together with my girlfriend, which takes some time.





[ame]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h7zFfV29MIE[/ame]

Sebviz

Hi there folks! Lately I've been working on getting this guys face to look good. Hope you like it :-)

Chantel-sky

Mass Effect is my favourite game series ever!!!
I'm so stoked to see more

Sebviz

Thanks Chantel-sky! Mass Effect is indeed awesome!

I'll try to finish the hands this weekend and maybe have an UE4 render, monday :-)

Sebviz

Progress :-)

Sebviz

almost done :-)

nickcomeau

Hey! Love how this is going so far. Only thing I would say is to think about how all these scratches/wrinkles work because right now the ones on the top of his head seem a bit random. Really cool though

Sebviz wrote: »

Hi there folks! Lately I've been working on getting this guys face to look good. Hope you like it :-)

slosh

I'm gonna have to agree that the head sculpt detail looks off. i would expect almost a rubbery feeling skin and it looks more like brittle, cracked, stone. Just doesn't read properly as skin IMO. Also, the modeling is great but the texturing looks very random and noisy. It's too small of a screenshot to really see but all i see is noise across everything. No intentional wear where you would naturally see it occur or dirt built up in the crevices or along areas that would be the most exposed. I think the values in the armor also need work as the colors you have are very close in value...i'm not seeing much separation. This can also be done with spec but I hardly see any of that either.

Sebviz

Thanks for the feedback!

I'm probably not gonna touch the head details, but I was trying to go for leather-ish look, but I might just have overdone it a bit :-)

I will put some time into the armor texture and adjust according to the things you've pointed out :-)

Currently I'm in the process of posing him. I've already got the CAT-rig working and skinning done, so hopefully today or tomorrow I'll have something to show :-)

Sebviz

update:

ae.

looking solid could you upload close-up shots? i want to see allllll the detail :P

Sebviz

Thanks ae!

I'll take some close-ups when I get off from work :-)

Sebviz

Here you go :-)

Sebviz

So I decided to make him a Cerberus Agent, trying to give him some more readable colors, and I think it works pretty good. I still need to make a proper gloss map, but I'm about to call this done, soon

Btw. Sorry for the low resolution, I made this update at midnight, and I was too tired to fix it. I'll make a larger version when I get home.

Madwish

I'm not a character artist so take what I say with a grain of salt.

Overall I like the design of the head, but I find the final render very hard to read. Even if I force myself to analyse it, I've no idea what to look at. There's emissive light everywhere just for the sake of it and the head is quite lost in that big detailed armor.

If I look at Garrus with lots of emissive, he's extremely very easy to read:



I can see the very specific bone structure and the strange joints of his race. The emissive looks cool but it also points to the head, it actually improves the readability of the character. And the head itself is the main point of the design, it makes him unique. It's not just about the headband and all, it's also the space the suit has around the head. It leaves some breathing room to really appreciate the head.

In your design, the armor is ultra detailed everywhere and I feel like the head is lost in it, which is a shame since the head design is really worked. The armor looks more like it would suit the masterchief to me. But the whole point of the masterchief is that you don't see his head, he's just a moving armor in the first place. All in all this gives the impression that the cool alien guy wears a generic armor, while both the head and the armor are actually well executed.

But again I work on environments so I might be wrong! And cool work nonetheless! :thumbup:

Sebviz

I’m finally done with my Mass Effect-project! I’ve learned sooo much from it! This image is done using Marmoset Toolbag 2. For some reason, it is incredibly slow to work with in Marmoset (UE4 can handle it just fine), so I’ve made some extra images with Vray :-)

This is straight out of Marmoset with minor color corrections and a little glow :-)





Texture-breakdown of the body/face:




Texture-breakdown of the armor:




Here’s a couple of Vray-renderings:

Sebviz

I'm not a character artist so take what I say with a grain of salt.

Overall I like the design of the head, but I find the final render very hard to read. Even if I force myself to analyse it, I've no idea what to look at. There's emissive light everywhere just for the sake of it and the head is quite lost in that big detailed armor.

If I look at Garrus with lots of emissive, he's extremely very easy to read

I can see the very specific bone structure and the strange joints of his race. The emissive looks cool but it also points to the head, it actually improves the readability of the character. And the head itself is the main point of the design, it makes him unique. It's not just about the headband and all, it's also the space the suit has around the head. It leaves some breathing room to really appreciate the head.

In your design, the armor is ultra detailed everywhere and I feel like the head is lost in it, which is a shame since the head design is really worked. The armor looks more like it would suit the masterchief to me. But the whole point of the masterchief is that you don't see his head, he's just a moving armor in the first place. All in all this gives the impression that the cool alien guy wears a generic armor, while both the head and the armor are actually well executed.

But again I work on environments so I might be wrong! And cool work nonetheless!

I think you're right about the readable aspect of the character, but I also like that a lot of things is happening in the armor, I guess I just need to practise how to control it, so its more readable. Of couse there's loads of things that could have been done better, but this is the first time I've done a project of this scale with restrictions such as "game-ready" geometry and making the concept art myself, so I'm pretty satisfied with the result. I'm gonna take all the feedback and do it better next time :-)